Wednesday 16th June 2021 - Postponement, Bees, Tadpoles and Ox Eyes

The rumoured continuance of the Covid restrictions was confirmed by Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, on Monday. The current restrictions will now not be relaxed on Monday 21st June and will probably continue until 19th July; that is with the exception of weddings. This is in response to the increase in the number of Delta variant Covid cases. The Government want to get as many adults as possible vaccinated before we return to normal e.g. no masks or social distancing. The hope is, fully vaccinated people will be less likely to need hospitalisation and therefore the NHS will not become overloaded with patients. If Covid cases can be reduced to a reasonable level, hospitals will be able to reduce the waiting list for routine operations. However, with Covid being an unknown virus, which is continually mutating, we cannot really predict how things will pan out over the coming years. When the first cases of Covid 19 were reported, early 2020, someone (unfortunately I can’t remember who) predicted it would be with us for ten years – they could be right. Following the PM’s announcement, The Belfry Centre for Music and Arts has cancelled some of their planned events and no doubt there will be other local events cancelled or postponed.

I am pleased to see there are more bees in our garden than earlier in the month. Not honey bees but a good variety of the different types of bumbles. They are not only enjoying the various flowers in the border but also the clover growing in the lawn. It seemed a shame to mow off the flowers and deny the bees of a source of pollen, so when Peter mowed the grass today he left an area around our pond untouched. Peter has been keeping the tadpoles in the pond supplied with meat suspended on a hook in the water. They mass around the meat and as they have grown so have their appetites for this source of food. As I mentioned in an early blog, making sure they have plenty of food will help stop them becoming cannibalistic and instead more should develop into frogs. I have been watching their growth, first getting bigger and then seeing their back legs develop and some now have front legs but still retain their tails.

It has been warm this week particularly so today, a hot and sticky day. The weather forecast shows showers and thunderstorms starting tonight and these will continue on and off over the next few days. This is good news for the garden. Despite watering late afternoon each day, come the following morning the ground looks dry again. It is also good news for Barney who has never liked the heat and lesser so in his old age. He no longer walks any distance but does enjoy a walk on the prom early mornings which is where I took today’s photos of - another example of sand sculpture (it must have taken quite a time to amass the pebbles inside the flint ring and around the pyramid) and what I think are the ‘ox-eye’ type of daisies growing on the cliffs.